Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
